The problem is not that things change in a democracy. The problem is that the change we get does not represent the will of the people.
A majority of Americans is dissatisfied with the Patriot Act [1] yet it keeps getting renewed.
A majority of Americans thinks political spending is corrupt [2] and that the political system is rigged, yet we get Citizens United to pour even more corporate cash into the machine.
A majority of Americans voted for the Democrat in 2000, but the Republican was installed instead [3].
People overwhelmingly disapprove using public funds to bail out reckless bankers [4], but somehow it happens anyway.
There was a global uproar over SOPA and PIPA which shut down this draconian legislation. But you can't kill the zombie, and it keeps coming back, now in secret trade agreements like TPP and TTIP that citizens aren't even allowed to read.
The Total Information Awareness program was suspended in 2003 [5] after a public outcry over warrantless mass surveillance. Naturally it was all reincarnated into secret NSA programs.
We'll see the same thing with devices and personal encryption. This is only a temporary setback for the powers that be, they'll be back with another sensational, emotional case soon enough.
The current system does not represent the will of the people. It's an oligarchy supported by a security apparatus run amok.
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/5263/civil-liberties.aspx
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-28/bloomb...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
[4] http://www.gallup.com/poll/106114/six-oppose-wall-street-bai...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness
On the PATRIOT Act, the link you provided shows that 63% of Americans either want to keep the entire thing or make minor changes.
Citizens United came from the Supreme Court, an institution that is explicitly designed to be shielded from the will of the people as much as possible.
The 2000 election was a clusterfuck, but it has happened exactly once since 1888. Besides, if a few hundred votes go the other way in Florida then we wouldn't even be talking about it.
On bankers, 60% isn't overwhelming, and the government decided to go against the will of the people because they thought it was the best course of action. Most experts agree that it was the lesser of two evils.
You can go read the TPP for yourself. It's been out for three months. [1]
Americans are divided in their opinions on NSA surveillance. [2]
None of this matters though because the will of the people is not supposed to be the final say in government action. There founding fathers did not believe in direct democracy.
[1] https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran...
[2] http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-ph...
100% of Americans have been specifically lied to by the government about those issues.
The best thing about Snowden's leaks is how the release has continually shown the government to be lying, and lying in response to the last batch of lies.
As such, opinions based on those lies aren't really valid.
If they got to a voting booth and saw a General Alexander's taped confession for treason they'd (probably) rethink those opinions.
> Americans are divided in their opinions on NSA surveillance.
Again, only because the NSA has spent our tax dollars on specifically telling us things that they know to be untrue. These people don't support the NSA, they just don't want to die in terrorism and don't know enough to know how unlikely that is, or how useless the NSA is in that regard.
> You can go read the TPP for yourself.
Oh great, now that it's too late and it's technically impossible for it to change.
The people have nothing to do with that decision. It is just plain unconstitutional. The framers of the constitution never meant for personal rights to be applied to corporations.
Regardless, corporate personhood has existed since colonial times, and the framers didn't do anything to stop it. Meanwhile, the McCain-Feingold act that Citizens United overturned had only been on the books for 8 years before much of it was overturned.
I don't think lobbying is a problem because the government has too much power, but rather because of the electoral system.
When voting is voluntary elections are won by the party that is best able to get out the vote. In order to get out the vote huge sums of money must be spent on political advertising and organization. When political parties are desperate for money it requires them to devote a lot of their time to fundraising and it makes them vulnerable to special interest groups with deep pockets (aka lobbyists). Voluntary voting means more opportunity for money to buy influence.
Compulsory voting, in contrast, means that almost all eligible voters will vote. Political parties can spend less money on advertising, less time fundraising, and more time developing policy and doing the job. Because the electors have to vote they're more likely to take an interest in the election, more likely to listen to the ideas being presented and vote accordingly. The only downside of compulsory voting is that there are more votes to count, but that cost is worth paying.
Compulsory voting is a practical step towards getting the money out of politics and improving the quality of a democracy.
If the government has no authority over something, there is no value in lobbying the government for help with that something.
Example: The government has subsidizes and regulates farming. Therefore there is a powerful incentive for agricultural interests to buy special treatment. Add ethanol considerations, and you have oil interests at work too.
Australia has compulsory voting. It also has the donkey vote, estimated at 2% of votes. That is a downside.
http://australianpolitics.com/voting/electoral-system/donkey...
The Australian Electoral Commission has a page about it: http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/index.ht...
I have the right to freedom of speech. You have the right to freedom of speech(assuming that you're an American citizen).
If you and I form a partnership with the express purpose of working together to combine our voices and speak together, we retain that right to freedom of speech.
That was what Citizens United held.
Beyond that, you're just plain wrong. Corporations are legal persons. Only persons can be parties to legal actions. If your neighbor's dog escapes and bites you, can you sue the dog? Of course not. You sue the neighbor, the person responsible. If your neighbor kills your dog, can your dog's puppies sue your neighbor? Of course not. Again, non-persons cannot be party to legal actions. A corporation can own property, pay taxes, sue, be sued and as a legal person, corporations have rights. They don't have all of the same rights as people, that's why I find it so frustrating when people conflate "people" with "persons". Legally, they are different concepts.
True, only due to bad precedent. "Should they be?" is a question we the people should have had a chance to argue and debate. Instead, it was by a judicial fiat that made a new type of citizenry. And honestly, they are pretty fucked up, with requiring their primary focus to be "Make money at all costs". A human with a similar 'ethics' would be called a sociopath.
Better yet, I'll believe corporations are legal people when Texas executes one.
Secondly, Patently false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film
United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins
United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls
United States v. Forty Barrels & Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola
You want more?
But it can't go to jail, and fines that are levied for wrongful behavior are often less than the profits obtained from said behavior and come about through settlements with no admission of wrongdoing, and without any executives being held responsible.
A person never lost their individual right to freedom of speech if they formed or became a member of a corporation.
That was precisely the issue before the court in this case. Did the individuals who formed the corporation Citizens United retain their right to freedom of speech as it related to releasing a documentary about Hillary Clinton near an election, in violation of McCain-Feingold?
The court ruled that they did not lose their right to freedom of speech.
They are virtually synonymous. People is a plural form of person. Most people don't speak legalese.
Not in the context of the Constitution. "The people" makes reference to American Citizens. "Person" makes reference to legal persons.
An alternate, legal definition is "a corporation."
Lets break down that definition and dive deeper into the abstraction.
A law is a piece of paper with words written on it that some people agree on.
A corporation is created by filing articles of incorporation. Again, this is a piece of paper with words written on it.
So, in reality using law to define a corporation as a person you have a piece of paper saying a piece of paper is a human being.
Legally, marijuana and cocaine are "narcotics" but pharmacologically they are not.
The law defines personhood for biological entities too.
One minute before birth, it's not a legal person. One second after birth, it is a legal person.
This is nothing new.
If you don't like the law, convince enough people that the law should be changed.
Is it your contention that we really should prevent this kind of thing from happening? Because to me, it seems like the very cornerstone of the democratic system. The minute such activity is illegal, the people have lost and we've become an oligarchy, unable to provide information to our fellow citizens necessary to cast informed votes.
In fact, your argument that the CU decision only benefits the wealthy is precisely the opposite of the reality. In fact, the wealthy don't need to cooperate in corporate bodies to finance public speech: folks like Donald Trump can get up on a pulpit with their own personal wealth. It's only us regular people who have the need to cooperate (i.e., to incorporate into a body to handle the demands of our effort).
Thus, CU is a benefit to the regular guy, without having much effect on the opportunities available to the rich who can go it alone.
'The people' aren't the ones 'providing information', campaigns full of biased individuals trying to beat a competitor are. The system and its 'elections' has nothing to do with the people, it has to do with a few powerful wealthy entities struggling for power.
Yes, we should definitely prevent a very small minority of political Übermenschen with more money than God from being able to control the system for their own aims.
As the parent said, how would you propose to limit political speech in a meaningful way without infringing on the free speech rights of the public at large?
There are already laws protecting freedom of expression, so I think it's disingenuous to suggest that CU is all about freedom of expression, and therefore good for democracy.
It doesn't really open the door to no-limit campaign financing. It says that the government can't put a limit on how much money a person or group of people (like the "Citizens United" nonprofit--hence the name) can spend to promote their OWN opinions.
There is a difference between 1) giving a political candidate $1 million, and 2) spending $1 million to shoot, print, and promote a documentary movie about a political candidate.
#1 is still illegal. And it's hard to imagine a way to limit #2 without giving someone the power to determine which movie (or website, or podcast) is "legal" and which is "illegal" speech about a candidate.
If we can't speak freely each other about candidates, how can we hope to have a valid political process at all?
As to what you assert their opinions would be, you'd have to look at their own writings and find something to the effect; noting what many of the constructs you described wern't even being considered during that time. But that evidence won't be in the Constitution.
The Constitution lays out who's responsible for what, and who can make what decisions. It is not a bible stating the mores of the nation.
Do you know why they didn't? Because it wasn't feasible to do so when information was traveling at the speed of the horse drawn carriage.
>In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good. But by what rules shall you choose your representatives? Agree upon the number and qualifications of persons who shall have the benefit of choosing, or annex this privilege to the inhabitants of a certain extent of ground.
-John Adams, Thoughts on Government
The limitation or assumption that "it is impossible that the whole should assemble" is no longer true.
I'm dubious that a country where most issues are voted on directly by the people could function with any significant amount of participation, mostly because people are not experts in most fields, and don't necessarily understand e.g. the macroeconomic effects of letting the largest banks in the world all go bankrupt. We elect representatives because there is a lot of work to do governing a country thousands of miles wide with over 300 million people, and I want people who can devote their profession to improving government in charge. Ones that we get to vote for regularly, of course.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
"Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. "
- James Madison, Federalist #51 : http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm
Tyranny of the majority and mob rule are just pejorative synonyms for democracy. Which would you rather have, tyranny by the majority or tyranny by a minority (i.e. monarchy/oligarchy/dictatorship)? Personally I'd argue for something else altogether.
At one end of the debate was the likes of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams who argued for the "tyranny of the majority" (democracy) and at the other was the likes of Alexander Hamilton, who wanted Oligarchy:
>I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced, and such has been its progress in the minds of the many, that this truth gradually gains ground. This government has for its object public strength and individual security. It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.
-Alexander Hamilton, Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299.1787-06-19
It would indeed be nice to delegate to the experts (i.e. scientists, engineers, psychologists etc.) on relevant issues, rather than having climate change deniers[1] on the Environmental Committee and people who have never sent an email[2] in their life on the Committee for Privacy and Technology.
> A majority of Americans is dissatisfied with the Patriot Act [1] yet it keeps getting renewed.
First, what polls say is not the same as what the electorate believes. Actual voters skew older and more conservative that the general public. Second, your poll doesn't show that Americans are dissatisfied with the Patriot Act. 63% of those polled think it requires no or only minor changes. 62% think it's about right or doesn't go far enough.
Those polls also have some very interesting statistics. 30% of those polled think that the government should take all steps necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks, even if that means violating basic civil liberties. 65% think otherwise, but 55% of those polled do not think the government's programs violate civil liberties. 55% of those polled in 2006 were okay with the Bush administration's wiretaps. 53% of those polled in 2006 thought that the Bush administration was about right or did not go far enough in restricting peoples' civil liberties to fight terrorism.
> A majority of Americans thinks political spending is corrupt [2] and that the political system is rigged, yet we get Citizens United to pour even more corporate cash into the machine.
In a 2010 poll, 68% of those polled thought the government should be able to prevent the sale of violent video games to minors: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1588/children-violence.aspx. Yet in 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a California law doing precisely that (Brown v. EMA). I think few people on HN would say that was wrongly decided. Given that the Supreme Court reviews laws that have been passed by elected legislatures, it is almost guaranteed that when it strikes down a law, it will be going against popular opinion.
> A majority of Americans voted for the Democrat in 2000, but the Republican was installed instead [3].
Frankly, I think we should not only abolish the electoral college, but the states as well. But in the meantime, who the "majority of Americans voted for" is not how we decide the election of the President.
I was with you until this part.
States gave us a path to gay marriage, and allow people to move to different areas that hold different values than the whole nation.
I'd suggest trying instant runoff voting before moving to something as drastic as abolishing states. I think IRV would allow people to express their votes and opinions more clearly than the system we have today.
Do you think IRV alone helps? What exactly do you propose?
Aside: in Australia, which has IRV, gay marriage is still not legal. Yay democracy. /s
How long has Australia had IRV? I don't think it's a magic solution on its own. But I do think it allows voters to more clearly express their wishes without playing as many games wondering what the rest of the voter base will do. That's not democracy.
Anyway, IRV does not guarantee your favorite will win and it only gives different results in certain situations, such as close elections. Maybe Australia hasn't had the right circumstances come up yet. There are still a lot of barriers to becoming a presidential candidate, and many good people just don't want that job, like Biden. I'm sure that's true at other levels of government too. I know I would not like to be in a room arguing for gay marriage against some Christians. Or discussing budget for things I don't understand. Or any other number of boring things. And at the end of your term, if you aren't reelected, there's a good chance many people don't like you. Public office isn't glorious while you're there. It's only glorious after you're long dead, and even then you probably had to do something hugely important to be praised.
> Do you think IRV alone helps? What exactly do you propose?
A good government is made up of active voters. I propose making good use of your voice through the internet, in person, and on the phone and in letters to your representatives. Inspire others to do so, keeping the focus on supporting issues you care about, and less so much about people or particular candidates. Share facts. Don't try to brainwash your fellow citizen by convincing them to vote in your man. Discuss and debate with mutual respect for everyone you meet, because we are all equals, you, me, the president, and those natives in Brazil who don't want to meet anyone from outside their jungle village. The more you can discuss without disrespecting someone's right to their own opinion, the more trustful and open our society will become, and we will advance to use technologies you can't imagine today. I know this because we're living in that future that people from the 1950s couldn't fathom. Use your vote and your voice, or risk losing it. It's your choice.
IRV has nothing to do with reducing the strength of two main parties. It just reduces the weirdness in the case of moderately close races.
EDIT: Just read a bit about approval voting and score voting. I guess I'll suggest those next time instead of mentioning IRV.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_se...
http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html http://ScoreVoting.net/PropDiatribe.html
Another thing Australia has, besides IRV, is compulsory voting.
> The state governments are hotbeds of corruption, ruled by minority interests because state elections have low voter turnout, and add an enormous administrative tax to pretty much every economic or legal transaction that happens in the U.S.
Maybe that needs to happen once in awhile for us to wake up and start exercising our rights again.
I don't think the world has gotten any easier to administrate. If anything it's gotten tougher. I like the idea of allowing smaller areas to administrate themselves outside the national constitution. The world is changing more quickly every day, states have worked well for 240 years at preventing dissolution, and if we consolidate more power we risk creating a majority who is unhappy enough to revolt, in my opinion.
Our goal is not to become all powerful and ignore citizens who aren't making use of their right to vote. Our goal is to be balanced, and in doing so we find strength as a byproduct. When you seek power as a goal, you have already started down the path to failure when someone inevitably usurps your authority. Sustainability is our goal, and balance is the way.
Surely, the Confederate secession qualifies as a dissolution.
I am of the opinion that the U.S. would fare better with more states, rather than fewer. If Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Diego all became city-states, the usual civic corruption would have less impact on the statewide governments of the donor states.
But I don't expect that change anytime soon. It was after all the states who gave up some of their sovereign powers to form a federal system after breaking free of British rule.
If YOU can't make up your mind, then just don't vote. Seriously. You can get Approval Voting and just not even show up and vote. You'll still get massively better election outcomes because of all the people who do show up to vote are using an objectively better decision-making algorithm. Yes, objectively better.
An honest vote in first-past-the-post, say for your awesome friend Bob for President, would give you approximately 0% return compared to the proper strategy of voting for the lesser evil of Clinton.
Suppose Approval Voting gives you a utility ("happiness") of 10 if you're tactical, or 9 if you're honest.
Now suppose Voting System X, in which a sincere and tactical vote are obviously identical (ignore the fact that this requires the system to use randomness), gives you a utility of 7.
Now do you _really_ want to take the latter system because there's no disparity in your happiness based on whether you knew the best strategy? Or would you rather take the system that gives you a better result?
More details here. www.electology.org/topic/tactical-voting
Obviously, if the honest approval ballot give me 9 utility points, and the strategy approval ballot gives me 10 utility points that's better then the system that always give me 7 utility points.
However, it seems to me that the situation is much more along the lines that an honest approval vote gives me 2 utility points, and a strategic one gives me a utility of 9.
See, I hold to political positions that almost always put me in the minority. If I only approved those candidates that that I actually liked, I'd only approve candidates with effectively zero chance of winning. This would let my least favorite candidate win, thus granting me very little utility.
Hence, I'll probably take System X, even if approval voting might, in theory, do better if everyone applied the strategy correctly.
No, it's not. I agree with you. (But perhaps didn't express that right.)
If you want your site to be usable for drive-by-quoting in an Internet discussion, perhaps you want to make two copies of that text, one specifically for Approval Voting and one for score voting in general?
PS Overall nice website, I am reading more.
This was the original site from years ago: https://sites.google.com/a/electology.org/www/approval-votin...
I wonder what the right strategy would be? I guess start small and introduce sensible and simple voting everywhere you can:
- Shareholder votes in a company - Where to go for dinner - Vote for mayor in a small town - ...
Most people don't even know that there are different voting systems, yet alone that some of them are vastly better than others. (It's like watching people play Monopoly, when they are much better games around these days.)
Britain also had some changes (with labour replacing liberal at the beginning of the 20th century).
I hail from Germany, which traditionally has a more proportional system. (It's a weird mix that seems to do reasonably well in practice. They could replace the first-past-the-post of the `Erststimme' with a score voting system, but the Erststimme isn't that important anyway.) They never had less than three parties in the federal parliament after WWII, even with a 5% threshold needed to move in.
The UK had three somewhat relevant parties in the 20th century (though only two relevant parties per county). Why haven't they changed electoral system? (And when they had a referendum about it, why did they suggest the dreadful IRV?..)
Certainly there are places like the UK, or my homeland, Canada, that have had three relevant parties for a while without changing the system. Although both UK and Canada have forces pushing for reform. The recently elected government of Canada gave an election promise to change the system, but, well, I'm not holding my breath.
But I'm not saying at all that any country with multiple parties will enact voting reform, but statistically, it seems that voting reform is often brought about that way.
I suspect IRV was brought to vote in the UK, because that was deal that could be reached between the Conservatives who didn't want change, and the Liberal Democrats who did. However, I will note that IRV isn't so bad when selecting members of a legislature. Approval/Condorcet elect compromise candidates, but we don't want to simply have a legislature of compromise candidates, but rather representative of how people voted. But some from of proportional system is probably better.
Explained here with a simple graphic to visualize it. www.electology.org/topic/tactical-voting
The optimal strategy on who to vote for depends not only on preferences, but also on what you know about the other voters. Polls help here.
The nice thing about approval voting is that, even though their might not be one single, clear and obvious way to translate your preference into your vote; but there is a clear and obvious family of ways to do so. And they have nice properties.
In-first-past-the-post, people often elect to give their vote to the lesser evil, instead of their preferred (third-party) candidate.
In approval voting, you will never have to give a compromise candidate more `vote' than any other candidate you prefer.
Ie all families of sensible voting strategies for approval voting look like this:
- sort candidates in order of preference - figure out a cutoff - approve anyone above the cutoff
The optimal cutoff depends on the peculiarities of the election (polls etc).
In practice, people manage this quite well intuitively. (I have run approval votings for small things, like which restaurant to take the team to.)
This works out well, tending to elect Condorcet winners. http://ScoreVoting.net/AppCW.html
So you do vote above the cutoff. But the optimal cutoff is really simple to find from the polls.
Your strategic consideration only consists in choosing a cutoff.
You must be joking? Almost no one ever votes their true preference in first-past-the-post. People usually vote for the lesser evil of the top two candidates, because any other strategy (like voting for who you'd actually like to win the election) just wastes your vote.
In any case, check out eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting for other people's thoughts on the system. There's much more online about all aspects and pros and cons that we don't need to rehash.
Borda Count really invites the gaming, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Potential_for_tact...
What about cloning candidates? The simulation only looks at strategic voting.
Compliance with "independence of clones" is in this property chart. http://scorevoting.net/CompChart.html
Consider the example with A, B, and C at the end. It claims that approval voting would probably elect C, but why? If the voters apply perfect strategy, B supporters won't approve C, and B will win. The same is true of range voting, where B supporters will give C a rating of zero.
It does not seem escapable that a majority voter block can dictate their wishes on the whole population by exaggerating their stated preferences.
I haven't convinced myself when multiple people can get elected.
Bayesian Regret calculations show IRV is actually THE WORST of the five commonly discussed alternative voting systems.
The best is Score Voting, but it's not as simple as Approval Voting. http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html
Clay Shentrup Co-founder of The Center for Election Science
The site you linked looks like it was built in 1998
You're overlooking the fact that people and politicians need time to grow and hone their skills. Without states, without giving them some ability to be corrupt, there is no testing ground. Politicians at the national level would not be experienced negotiators because the first step in being a politician would be joining the federal government. And I don't think forcing gay marriage on the US would've been a good idea any sooner even if we'd had a sufficiently progressive president and congress. I have deep sympathy for all the people who had to wait so long for society to officially accept them, but I think even they can respect that we might not be as strong of a unified society if gay marriage had become legal in, say, the 80s, rather than today. A unilateral decision by a president and majority congress could have set the issue back even further.
It seems to me that minority interests have a disproportional influence on policy decisions and that a single issue may not have a high enough priority to get elected representatives to change policy on that issue.
For example, if you look at the the NMSL (National Maximum Speed Limit) that was in effect from 1974 through 1995, it was quite obvious, based on traffic speed measurements, that almost no one was complying with the law on interstate highways, yet it took 13 years before it was modified to allow for 65 mph speed limits and another 8 years before it was repealed entirely.
So, it's entirely possible that the electorate was not in favor of that particular law long before 1995, but that single issue wasn't important enough for congress to vote on for around a decade.
Moreover, we have no way of knowing whether Bush or Gore "won" Florida. Voting is a mechanism for measuring something. Like any method of measurement, it has a margin of error. The margin between Bush and Gore was so close that it was almost certainly smaller than the error in the voting mechanism itself. The scientifically right answer would have been to exclude Florida (and, in fact, several other states decided by very small margins) from the sampling process.
The breadth and complexity of the issues the government has to deal with are far beyond what any one citizen could keep track of, that's why we don't have a direct democracy.
s/sometimes/most of the time
If you redefine democracy to be the narrowest possible interpretation, you eliminate every government in the world. You also make the word pretty much useless.
There are some governments who claim authority to take any action authorized by the democratic process. The US government is not among them. Ergo, it is not properly classified as a "democracy."
I don't think there's a better source of information about whether the government of the united States of America is a democracy than the position papers written to advance the four corners of its founding instruments, and they deliver an unambiguous "no."
Let's say, for a a moment, that your definition, which seems to conflate these two distinguishable scenarios (one in which a government's power is strictly limited and enumerated, and another in which that power extends to the bounds of whatever a voting majority or their representatives might desire), is a reasonable one.
How, then, do you discuss this distinction?
...and even by your definition, while an individual state might quality, the government of the USA does not: "supreme power" is wholly unavailable through the US government, at least in its legitimate purview (of course it exceeds this boundary frequently and flagrantly). It has dominion only over the specific areas outlined in the constitution; those not mentioned are reserved for the states or the people.
I'm not a constitutional scholar, so forgive me. What exactly do you think unambiguously demonstrates that the United States is not a democracy?
> ...and even by your definition, while an individual state might quality, the government of the USA does not: "supreme power" is wholly unavailable through the US government, at least in its legitimate purview (of course it exceeds this boundary frequently and flagrantly)
I feel like the definition addressed this. (In fact, given that this is Webster's, I'd expect that the definition was written to specifically include the United States government.) The definition says "the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly". The fact that the Constitution reserves nonenumerated powers for "the states or the people" indicates a recognition that the power is vested in the people. The "legitimate purview", as you put it, consists of powers granted by the people who hold "supreme power".
We don't have that. We get to pick from a closed set of possible representatives and they aren't bound to follow our desires. (Or even check...)
It's not the indirection of the representative, it's that they aren't required to even try to represent. Your vote in the USA essentially elects a mini-tyrant who theoretically wants to be elected again so much that they'll pander to you in exchange for that but only so far as they can use you. As soon as they'll get enough money by selling you out to compensate for your lost vote, they will.
And worse, this is how it's supposed to work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
Every time there's an argument about wanting more democracy in the US, it seems someone always appears to say "but that's mob rule!". No, nobody wants mob rule. But there's a canyon between what exists now and what a more representative government could look like.
Predictably, the argument devolves into one about direct democracy vs. representative democracy, and that's really not the issue at all.
The issue is that the current system consistently acts contrary to the will of the people.
To quote the Princeton study from your video:
The preferences of the average American appear to have only a
minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon
public policy.That's a feature, not a bug.
There's plenty of time to undo the actions of the past 10, 20, even 30 years.
If you sit back on your heels, throw your arms up in the air, don't vote and say nothing, then you won't be participating in democracy. But if you do use your voice and vote then at least you can say you tried. Everything won't always go your way and we don't have a perfect system. But given our diverse population it is a pretty good one. I say that while in full agreement that there are a lot of laws that need to be reversed or undone.
You'll never entirely remove money from politics. And, we should keep trying to remove it even though we know we won't end up with a perfect solution. That said, lobbyists aren't inherently evil and many share our viewpoints (for example, the EFF)
The US is a plutocracy. It's in no sense a working democracy. There's a public voting circus every couple of years, but policy - which is the only thing that really matters in politics - is largely defined by Wall St, the Fed, and by mil-ind corporate lobbying groups.
All of the above are politically unaccountable and legally untouchable. See for example the ridiculous excuses made to prevent the passage of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Transparency_A...
Just because an election or a vote doesn't go your way, or the government doesn't shift dramatically every election, doesn't mean the nation does not have a working democracy.
You're cherry-picking topics you (presumably) agree on.
[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-nearly-8-in-10-americans-be...
Or is your point that people who believe in angels need to be surveilled without warrants and have their meager earnings confiscated to enrich the elite?
That's a feature, not a bug.
The Electoral College was specifically designed to mitigate the power of densely populated areas.
Sometimes the will of the people prevails, and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, it's really disheartening; sometimes all our effort is for naught. But if we don't even try, it will always be for naught.
If there has ever been a time to illustrate that our country is an oligarchy and not a Democracy, this has been the year. There is a non-zero chance that even in our rigged, broken system that the candidates that are recognized in one or both parties will be ones that received less voter support and were chosen by the wealthy.
>We have to be prepared to fight the crypto wars forever, like unions are still fighting the labor wars a century later.
Just like the war against CISPA, which was lost to attrition.
>We could revoke the 13th and 14th Amendments and have slavery again--there is no legal impediment to that
What does the Constitution matter at all? Our system of checks and balances is beyond broken - its gone. Not to be disrespectful, but anyone who thinks that the Constitution is recognized by the government is delusional or worse. The 1st, 4th, 6th, and 9th amendments have been rendered basically moot by recent government action and court inaction. The truth is that you can't have a functioning democracy without the informed consent of the governed. When the majority of the population lacks the capacity to generate informed consent and those in power work actively to suppress that capacity you end up with the authoritarian oligarchy that we have today.
Our servants have been shown to be lying to us, and have continued lying to congress when called to task.
That's directly subverting our democracy. Treason.
Actually, I think this is the genius of the amendment system.
You are correct that it could happen. But unlike laws that can be passed or revoked by Congress by political whim, the barrier to creating or overturning Constitutional amendments is much higher and more difficult to pass.
He quite excitedly told Einstein and Morgenstern that he had found a weakness in the Constitution that would allow the US to become a dictatorship. They were horrified and tried to tell him not to bring up such ideas at the hearing, but the judge happened to note that it was a good thing that in the US, unlike Gödel's native Austria, we were not a dictatorship -- which prompted Gödel to begin explaining his discovery...[2]
Unfortunately, no one ever bothered to write down what Gödel's idea was! But it has been speculated[3] that it is this: that the Article V provision for constitutional amendments does not exclude that provision itself from amendment -- so it is possible to first pass an amendment making it easier to pass amendments, after which it could be a short trip to dictatorship under the right conditions.
Fanciful, but a fascinating story. Picturing Gödel, Einstein, and Morgenstern hanging out and being playful with each other is a treat.
[1] http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com
[2] https://d78508e2-a-97b1dc77-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/jeffr...
[3] http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=42406910501309506...
The UK manages to be a Parliamentary democracy without having a single coherent constitution at all, let alone one free of logical defects- so having a perfectly consistent and "loophole-free" constitution doesn't seem particularly important in practice.
The easiest way to wholly undermine the US Constitution is to just expand the Supreme Court bench and then pack it with your cronies, who will then let you do whatever you want and call it constitutional. No amendment needed!
Trump's ideas are "new" in that he does say them first. They appeal to many because we all know the old ideas aren't great, from painful experience. Trump's brand of crazy hasn't hurt us in a long time so we don't see it.
As an example: Bush senior said he didn't even think atheists could be considered citizens. But there's 0% chance that he'd try to enact that, or that it'd pass. Trump's ideas have the veneer of "business decisions" and seem more likely to get enacted.
All the more reason to start being active in discussions about his ideas.
The most compelling for me is he is okay with arming Japan with nuclear weapons.
Trump claims China is tipping the balance of power by building tiny islands in the South China Sea. These are relatively close to China and far from the US. He claims this could kick off WW 3 if not properly off set by adding something to the other side of the scale. He says he'd be okay with arming multiple new nation states, including South Korea and Japan, to balance things again.
But arming new nation states with nuclear weapons would severely throw things out of balance. It'd take years for these countries to ramp up the skills necessary to handle nuclear weapons. And during this time, China could build a decent PR campaign in their country encouraging citizens to come together to fight Japan. Japan has still not apologized for all the atrocities they committed in China during WW II, and some Chinese people do not like that. Pour some gasoline on that small fire and it could spread.
Knowing China's feelings towards Japan after WW II, China's population would certainly not accept Japan having nukes. They might come together to fight a war. Even though China is not a democracy, they still need their people to unify around a common cause in order to choose war over revolution.
I doubt many of Trump's supporters would agree that giving Japan nukes is a good idea. They're the one country we used nukes against. So, it's a good point to bring up with potential Trump voters. I'd like to see that idea of his get more attention so people can see just how impractical he is. Giving SK and Japan nukes isn't just a matter of the US President signing a piece of paper. There are international treaties, diverse governments and populations in place, and as far as I know, Trump has not been to any of those places.
Here is the text:
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
So take something like the ACA individual mandate. Does that violate the 10th amendment? Well, it was held to not be a valid exercise of the commerce clause power. But it was held to be a valid exercise of the taxing power. So it cannot violate the 10th amendment, because the taxing power is one of the ones "delegated to the United States by the Constitution." Say the Supreme Court had held it wasn't valid under the taxing power either. Would it violate the 10th amendment? Technically, but the Supreme Court wouldn't invoke the 10th amendment to strike it down, because a law not supported by one of the enumerated powers is invalid anyway.
The 10th amendment, by it's very language, cannot serve as any sort of independent check. If government action passes muster under one of the enumerated powers, it is by definition "delegated to the United States by the Constitution" and cannot violate the 10th amendment. If it doesn't, it's invalid by reason of not being within the government's enumerated powers--no 10th amendment necessary.
If you read the enumerated powers broadly enough, you are correct, but I find the 'generosity' of these interpretations to be quite disturbing. Commerce within the states is inter-state commerce, the Federal Government has a compelling governmental interest in your treatment of your neighbors, and whatever you produce or consume in your home affects the Federal Government's compelling interest in a regulatory scheme; everything not otherwise explicitly prohibited is fair game. Even the rights explicitly protected in the Constitution are subject to different levels of scrutiny, (i.e. rational, strict, etc. depending on how much the Judicial branch cares,) even when there was no provision for the Government ever violating them.
If a well-funded superpac would systematically and indefinitely try every legal exploit to re-enact slavery you'd be grinning each attempt because "democracy"? ....
The idea that our form of government allows us the freedom to resist predatory laws is inspiring, the necessity to fight that fight... over and over again... is the best representation that true freedom is delicate.
To protect that freedom we need to hold critical thinking above all else to guard ourselves against the faux intellectualism of statements like yours.
If everyone in the US strongly valued privacy, then our government would have to behave very differently. The US government's lack of respect for personal privacy merely reflects the apathy towards the issue held by the American voting public.
I agree with the parent, that if we want progress, there is no easy path. The only long term solution is to educate the voting public as to the value of privacy. Anything else is just a band-aid.
No matter which system of government, rules (in the broadest sense) can always change. Democracy is just the attempt to better align those rules with the interests of the people (in the broadest sense).
As long as the FBI keeps within the rules they can obviously try again. And that’s got very little to do with democracy and much more with the rule of law which is really central here.
Everyone – even and especially the government – has to adhere to the law, but there are mechanisms to act within the law or to settle questions or even to change the law, all through some sort of proper and defined process. That’s just what the rule of law is.
However, within the system of rule of law (and the particular implementation of that system in the US) there are certainly ways for questions to be more or less settled. Things that are easy to change (e.g. executive orders) and things that are hard to change (e.g. constitutional amendments). There are graduations to this – and graduations that exist on purpose.
Behind that is also the realization that quickly changing things – while sometimes necessary – is not really always desirable. So there is a certain sluggishness built right into the system on purpose. And achieving constitutional amendment levels of sluggishness is actually pretty hard to overcome in the US. It’s hard to get an amendment, it’s hard to remove it. Quite on purpose. It’s for settling questions for years.
(All of this is not to say that some states don’t try to have some core values enshrined for all eternity. The German constitution has such an article that explicitly forbids amendments of two other articles. No amendment can change that Germany is a democratic and social federal state, that there are elections and three branches of government, that there is rule of law, that every German has the right to resist against anyone attempting to remove that order, that human dignity is inviolable, that human rights are the basis of any human society and that the basic rights defined in the constitution bind as law all three branches of the government. Even if you agree that there is really no way to amend this in any way – something which constitutional scholars aren’t super-decided on – there could still be a revolution of some sort that just abolishes the old constitution … things can always change, also in technically illegal ways.)
Could, but won't. Government won't ever try. People are saying - right or wrong - that they will try again to enforce backdoors.
That is certainly a valid point in the case of laws that expand a state's authority, but I don't think that is true where explicit restrictions on the state's authority are put in place (ex: bill of rights). I doubt anybody (outside of the Brady Campaign) will ever look over the bill of rights and think that we would have been better off without the explicit restrictions made clear.
> We could revoke the 13th and 14th Amendments and have slavery again--there is no legal impediment to that.
Of course there is - the constitutional amendment process is designed precisely to be an impediment. Unlike a legal proceeding, where courts can create case law essentially at a whim by legal means alone, the constitutional amendment process is a complex and different political process, requiring quite a few procedural stars to align.
One of the problems is that the courts (and, for that matter, Congress and the POTUS) tend not to abide by the text of the constitution, preferring to usurp the political process with their own legal, legislative, or bureaucratic one, respectively.
> We could abolish the EPA, or the IRS, or the NSA. We don't because these have enough supporters who value what they do, today.
I don't think this is true, but I concede that it's not really measurable. What I mean is: the reason that these methods of control persist is not that they have made a convincing case to the public that their mission is laudable and faithfully executed (environmental protection, accurate and fair taxation, and security for US persons vis a vis international dealings). In fact, it's quite plain to see that all three of these agencies have, from time to time, failed spectacularly at these missions, with some incidents attributable to incompetence and others to misconduct.
Instead, I want to suggest that the reason they persist is that they provide convenient mechanisms for exacting power and that they are controlled by people who desire that capacity.
> The 2nd Amendment remains strong today because millions of Americans work every day to keep it that way.
While I agree with this statement, I think that it is somewhat contrary to your previous one. Here you are talking about the preservation of protections offered by the text of a document, which I agree can only be protected by political vigilance. This is fundamentally different from (and perhaps the opposite of) the assertion by entrenched agencies that they operate by political will.
> So, the long-term solution for strong encryption must be a cultural one. We have to be prepared to fight the crypto wars forever, like unions are still fighting the labor wars a century later. Like civil rights activists are fighting racism even today--and will be for the foreseeable future.
Here's where I start to agree with you. This is beautifully put.
Your description sounds like Camus' interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus. I like it.
Some thing seem to be permanent. High priority lobbying goals for big corporations. (Examples: Disney & copyright extensions. Corn & corn subsidies. Car dealerships.)
Nothing except the fact that we don't have a multi-billion-dollar interest group paying us to do so ;). I agree with you that things can sometimes be done at the grassroots level, but there is simply no comparison to the tenacity and endurance of influence available to the big players. Any grassroots effort must find a way to surmount that obstacle, not ignore it.
Remember, at one point, there was an entire plot by businesses to basically take the entire country over, and it was highly supported by members of congress and others.
So yeah. It's gotten better, but it's still way too pervasive.
No. You can't roll back a human right. If you did it wouldn't be a valid law and people would be justified in armed resistance to it.
> We could abolish the EPA, or the IRS, or the NSA. We don't because these have enough supporters who value what they do, today.
Well, in the case of the NSA it's more because we suspect they'd commit treason and bring down the country if we tried.
(ie, pull out an old tape of Obama and frame him with something, etc.)
> Well, welcome to life in a democracy. Nothing is ever settled with finality because there are plenty of ways for future generations to change the laws we cherish today--for good or ill.
Yes, things can always be screwed up. But it should be illegal for a government worker (ie FBI) to specifically try to undermine existing decisions by, for instance, lying in court, or paying for propaganda they know to be untrue. Both things we know they do.
Well, welcome to life in a democracy. Nothing is ever settled with finality because there are plenty of ways for future generations to change the laws we cherish today--for good or ill.
We could revoke the 13th and 14th Amendments and have slavery again--there is no legal impediment to that. That we don't do that is a reflection of our cultural values--today--which we continually discuss and reinforce.
We could abolish the EPA, or the IRS, or the NSA. We don't because these have enough supporters who value what they do, today. The 2nd Amendment remains strong today because millions of Americans work every day to keep it that way.
So, the long-term solution for strong encryption must be a cultural one. We have to be prepared to fight the crypto wars forever, like unions are still fighting the labor wars a century later. Like civil rights activists are fighting racism even today--and will be for the foreseeable future.
Is that depressing? Not to me; I find it inspiring, much better than a world in which government decisions are truly final. Beware that level of power IMO.